Rath's Deception Blog Tour

On the cut-throat
streets of Tarkis, orphaned teens like Rath end up jailed … or dead. So
when the shadowy Janus Group offers Rath a chance to earn riches
beyond his wildest dreams, he seizes it. But the Janus Group is as
ruthless as the elite assassins it controls. Rath will have to
survive their grueling, off-world training, and fulfill all fifty kills in
his contract before a single cent comes his way. And ending
so many lives comes with a price Rath can’t anticipate. It’ll certainly
cost him what’s left of his innocence. It may well cost him his life.

For More Information

Piers Platt is
the New York Times bestselling author of "Combat and Other
Shenanigans," a memoir of his year-long deployment to Iraq as a tank and
scout platoon leader. Piers grew up in Boston, but spent most of his childhood
in various boarding schools, including getting trained as a classical singer at
a choir school for boys. He joined the Army in 2002, and spent four years on
active duty.

When he's not writing or spending time with his
lovely wife and daughter, Piers works as a strategy consultant in New York
city.

A light flickered on the edge of
Rath’s peripheral vision: his internal heads-up display had an incoming
message.

Rath felt a bead of sweat form at
his brow. He smiled at another group of guests and offered them his tray of
canapés, simultaneously advancing through screens in his heads-up display to
find a photo of Sorgens in order to identify him.

Okay, got it.

“We’re all done, thanks,” one of
the guests told him.

“Of course,” Rath said. “Sorry.”

Guess I lingered a little
longer than a normal server would have.He stepped away from the group, spinning slowly in place as
if planning which group he would approach next. There’s Sorgens – far side
of the room.

Rath stopped at three other groups
of party-goers, working his way around the outside of the room in a looping
curve, careful to avoid heading directly for the Deputy Ambassador. As he left
the third group, he rearranged the napkins on his tray, as if straightening
them, and surreptitiously jabbed one of the canapés with a tiny hypodermic
needle, before slipping the needle back into his sleeve. Then he turned and
headed for the Deputy Ambassador, but a security guard cut in front of him.
Rath changed direction smoothly and headed for a different group, but he kept
Sorgens in his line of sight. The security guard was leaning in close to
Sorgens, covering his mouth to whisper in his ear. Rath dialed up his audio
implants.

“… credible threat. Intelligence is
rated ‘High Reliability,’ so we’re taking it very seriously,” Rath heard the
man say. The Deputy Ambassador blanched, his face turning nearly as white as
his tuxedo shirt. “I’d like to get you out of here right now, sir.”

Sorgens turned to the other guests,
and made his apologies. “I’m sorry – I’m afraid duty calls, there’s an urgent
message that needs my attention.” He headed toward the room’s exit, closely
followed by the guard.

Want a snack before you go?Rath thought, chagrined. He broke away from the group he
was serving and walked briskly toward the kitchen, which was in the same
direction Sorgens was headed.

Let’s hope the kitchen has
another exit close to wherever Sorgens is headed.

Rath ducked inside – to his relief,
he saw an exit at the far side of the crowded room. He dumped his tray into the
first trash can he saw and elbowed through the servers and cooks, heading for
the door.

Rath ignored him and continued toward
the back of the room, pushing through the swinging door. Sorgens was just
disappearing through a side door halfway down the corridor, while the guard
positioned himself outside the door. That looks like a restroom. Rath walked
toward the guard, who was watching his approach closely, hands behind his back.

Probably got a pistol in a belt
holster back there,Rath
decided. So much for
the frontal assault.

Instead he took a sharp right turn
down a side corridor, disappearing from the guard’s view. Mechanical plates
implanted within his face shifted, obeying Rath’s commands, while his hair
greyed, and his skin tone lightened. In the space of three seconds, he looked
exactly like his original target. He turned on his heel, and stepped back out
into the main corridor, looking both ways before appearing to notice the guard.

“You,” Rath pointed at the man,
“have you seen my deputy around here?”

“Ah, excellent,” Rath said, walking
up. He was at least two inches shorter and thirty pounds lighter than the real
ambassador, but people were slow to notice body type differences – if the face
and hair matched, such discrepancies were usually dismissed. Rath’s voice matched
the Ambassador’s as well. As ever, hearing another man’s computer-generated
voice from his own lips made Rath’s skin crawl. “Let me just have a word, and
then you can get him out of here,” Rath told the guard.

“Of course, sir,” the guard said,
holding the door open for him.

Rath let the door close behind him,
then strode over toward Sorgens, who was standing at a urinal along the wall.
Sorgens looked up and saw Rath.

“You heard about the threat?”
Sorgens asked.

“I did,” Rath replied. “Glad to see
you’re on your way out of here.” He called up the targeting module in his
heads-up display, and slipped a pen out of his pocket. The implement was known
as a ballistic pen, built out of reinforced titanium for use as a
close-quarters weapon, and modified by Rath to include a nerve toxin coating,
for a faster kill. As Sorgens zipped himself up, Rath’s eye implant overlaid an
anatomical model on his image, matching it to fit his size and body orientation
relative to Rath, highlighting his bone structure and major organs. Sorgens
turned away from the wall, and Rath stepped forward, putting his full body
momentum behind the thrust. The pen punched between two ribs, directly into the
highlighted outline of Sorgens’ heart, while Rath covered Sorgens’ mouth with
his other hand, stifling his shocked gasp of pain. Rath left the pen embedded
to minimize the bleeding, and, still covering Sorgens’ mouth, he grabbed him
under the arm and dragged him silently across the room into one of the toilet
stalls. He propped the dying man on top of the toilet, pulled the door shut
behind him, and walked over to the sink, where the ambassador’s reflection
stared back at him.

Need to wash this blood off my
hands. But my guess is that guard is supposed to escort Sorgens out of the
building, so it’ll be an easier exit if I pose as him.

“Everything okay, sir?” The
security guard was pushing open the door.

Rath reacted instinctively, and
bent over the sink, splashing his face with water as he shifted his hair and
face to match Sorgens’. He stood up and reached blindly for the paper towels,
and dabbed at his face as he completed the transformation. When he opened his
eyes, the guard was eying him in the mirror.

“Ready to go, sir?” the man asked.

“Yes – let’s get going,” Rath told
him. The guard glanced at the closed stall door and Rath tensed himself in
readiness, but the man simply turned and walked back out into the hall,
checking in both directions before motioning for Rath to follow. That was close,Rath thought, falling into step
as they headed off down the hallway. He’s going to be pissed when he
finds out he personally escorted the killer out of the building.

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